A Turlock family can get tested for diabetes, learn about childhood lead poisoning prevention, take an inside look at a Life-flight helicopter and get information on taking a CPR class all in one place on Saturday at Emanuel Medical Center’s free Community Health Fair.

The health fair will feature over 50 agencies/activities and be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the center parking lot of EMC. Attendees can enter on the east side of the hospital campus from Colorado Avenue at Waldorf or on the north side from Tuolumne Road via the service road between the Emanuel Cancer Center and Turlock Christian School. There’s also a bus stop for the #3 line at the east side entrance.

“The pandemic has underscored something that I have believed for a long time, which is that healthcare is a community thing and it really takes the partnerships across everything. And we saw that it's just so important for this city to be engaged and for the county to be engaged, again, really underscored during the pandemic, but housing matters and clean air and water matter and access to food and all these things. And then there's the safety and preventative stuff, making sure that our roads are safe, making sure that kids are wearing their helmets when they're on bikes, all the way to when patients need a hospital. Obviously we're here for that, but it has always been my aspiration to do this type of thing, a health fair, where we can really bring people together and engage the community. Because that's what it's going to take to actually improve health for our community, it takes all of us,” said Emanuel Medical Center CEO Dr. Murali Naidu.

Gurnick Academy and Merced College students will be at the health fair to do free health screenings, including anxiety and depression, blood pressure, body mass index, non-fasting cholesterol, non-fasting glucose and vision.

“Being in the Central Valley, the big issues that we face as a healthcare system, that our community faces, are centered around diabetes care, we continue to see that grow here. Access to care generally is a huge problem, trying to make sure people get access to preventative services. Across the board, women’s and children's health is a is a challenge, even more than just primary care across the Central Valley. And then primary care is a huge gap for this entire area of the state, which is crazy when you think about the fact that California is such an economic powerhouse in the world, not just the country. So those are the types of things that we're hoping to elevate in terms of awareness,” said Naidu.

But Naidu said the health fair isn’t just about the “boring” health information and screening services being offered. There will be a Life-flight helicopter, ambulance and fire truck for the kids to up close and personal with, bounce houses and healthy snacks.

“Part of it is also just making it fun, right? So we're going to  have our emergency medical services partners, and we're going to have a helicopter out here so that kids can see what that Life-flight helicopter looks like, and other fun activities. We think about bouncy houses and things like that as being just for fun, but it's also activity and that is really key to make a part of kids’ lives as they transition into adults. So there's going to be fun stuff that is also health related that we don't usually think about as being health related,” he said.

The health fair is free and open to the public. For more information, call (209) 667-4200.